Mr Reid said the Channel Seven broadcast contract is antiquated and must be rewritten.

"[The agreement is] completely out of step. It's very interesting that independently of each other, both News and Fairfax have chosen to not accept these terms," he said.

Live sport one of few reliable ad earners

Associate professor Brett Hutchins from Monash University, an expert in the Australian media's coverage of sport, said the deal makes sense for Seven.

"In an era of fragmenting audiences, live sport is one reliable source of content where you can actually draw in mass audiences and sell them to advertising," Dr Hutchins said.

"For those who are actually interested in the Commonwealth Games, of course Channel Seven is going to be their first port of call."

Dr Hutchins said there were still many who followed sport through 'secondary' coverage of events without tuning in live.

"But where the value of news organisations with access to reasonably large audiences comes in, be it the ABC or Fairfax or News Corp, because of course they command such large numbers of online users and readers," he said.

"My guess, and it is a guess, would be that this is very much around that secondary audience who will dip in and out of the games.

"This will be really put back onto the question of what the Commonwealth Games organisers want out of this, and how much they're actually earning."